Hello to you all.
Wannabe magicians come here first!
I had to get that near the start of my post in case it shows up in a search engine somewhere, you'll find out why shortly!
I'm really here to learn...I've found some useful stuff whilst I've been lurking and decided to come out of the woodwork.
I live in Hednesford, Staffs and have had an interest in the workings of magic for a while now, but have only started feeding the yearning to perform it recently (friends n family at the moment, trying to walk before running here)!
I have a couple of gaffed deck tricks and few gimmick based items in my limited repertoire, but am looking to move on, you know do some clean stuff! I do have a strong interest in card magic...but as I've only really concentrated on this in the past I'm looking forward to moving outside of this onto some other stuff, I really haven't found my niche as it's very early days!
However I do know I need to work on performance so will be asking questions on that in the future, I realised doing a few bits for family recently that although I can pull the trick off, my patter was abismal. I'm not surprised because before I came here to TM I hardly considered it (is this just me?
or is this a standard beginners error too?). I of course realise now that no patter/presentation and there's no magic, it's just a bloke firking with gadgets showing you clever ideas/moves!
Now...that mysterious first sentence the only thing I'd say is I hope anyone with an interest in becoming a performer comes here before buying anything to increase their knowledge of the art that is magic.
Unfortunately for me I didn't find this community until I had been caught out (like I know from my lurking other people on here have) by the sale of magic kits and props and gaffed decks of cards...I went all bleary eyed and ordered them from a nameless website (nameless because it was my fault not the websites, in fact when they didn't have the kit in I ordered they immediately upgraded me to the next kit above it in price/quality FOC!) and am now quite a few quid down that I didn't need to spend (yet, probably ever)!
At least the kit I've ordered should provide me with some good stuff to teach me some of the basics (cup n balls, rope tricks, coin magic etc.).
OH and on gimmicks I appreciate they have their place in magic and there are stunning effects to be had, I guess I'm talking about clean stuff to start and end with, and use the gimmicks to create an effect but for me not to rely on them, hopefully this makes sense, and isn't offensive that's not what I'm trying to do!
A few days trawling through some old and some not so old posts and I realised I needed only to spend in the first instance about £16.50 (which is the price I have got for both the Royal Road to Card Magic (RRCM) & Mark Wilsons Complete Course in Magic when ordered from amazon.co.uk currently (see date of post!), the only issue being usually despatched in 2weeks!!!! (we'll see)
Ah well if you'll pardon the pun, I'm on the right road now (or so I'm led to believe, I've just realised of course as you're all learning to be or have become masters of misdirection I could be striding up the garden path to nowhere
)
Well I wanted this to be a quick introduction...ah well at least you now have an idea of where I've come from and got to and am trying to get!
Take care!
lmw
P.S. as it is still quite relevant, Happy New Year to you all!
